1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and its ink cartridge, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus capable of preventing an illegal use of the cartridge and the use of a defective ink cartridge, and its ink cartridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the widespread use of image forming apparatuses such as a printer, a copy machine, a facsimile machine and the like, the amount of ink cartridge consumed has been increased. Ink hereinafter indicates toner, liquid in which toner is diffused to a liquid solvent, an ink ribbon (tape) and the like which are used to form an image on a recording paper.
When ink in the ink cartridge runs out, a user replaces the ink cartridge with new one. Manufacturers of the image forming apparatuses have recycled the used ink cartridges for the purpose of the effective use of resource and an environmental protection.
The quality of ink cartridge exerts an influence upon a printing quality of the image forming apparatus. For example, when the cartridges are recycled without providing sufficient maintenance, color fading, inconsistencies in print density and so on are generated in the output image of the image forming apparatus. For this reason, the manufacturers have performed various kinds of maintenance processing of the cartridges, such as inspection, cleaning, replacement of parts, print test, and like at the time of recycling. Therefore, as long as the ink cartridge recycled by the manufacturer (genuine cartridge) is used, a normal image forming can be generally obtained.
While, the ink cartridges provided by the third party other than the manufacturer and the defective toner-filled cartridges to which neither inspection nor replacement of parts are performed have been put on the market. Such ink cartridges, however, are easily to generate troubles such as wherein print quality is reduced, no printing can be carried out, no ink can be used up. When such troubles occur, the user asks the manufacturer, which provides genuine cartridges in general. For this reason, though the manufacturer sells the genuine cartridges, the manufacturer is involved in the trouble caused by the use of illegal cartridge. Moreover, the user cannot receive guarantee against the defective product from the third party.
The image forming apparatuses to overcome such inconvenience are disclosed in, for example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication Nos. H5-224479 and H9-185311.
The image forming apparatus disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. H5-224479 scans a bar code indicated on the ink cartridge and determines whether or not the cartridge is genuine. Then, when it is not genuine, a defective image is printed so as to substantially prohibit the use of non-genuine product. However, since the manufacture of bar code can be easily attained, illegal manufactures can relatively easily counterfeit the bar code and adhere the counterfeit bar code to the recycled cartridge to be sold. Therefore, the above cannot prevent the use of the non-genuine ink cartridge effectively.
The image forming apparatus disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. H9-185311 has a plurality of switches at a surface contacting the cartridge. The cartridge has specific concave and convex portions at a surface contacting the image forming apparatus. When the cartridge is attached to the image forming apparatus, a specific switch is turned on. The image forming apparatus detects an ON/OFF pattern of the switch, whereby determining whether or not the attached ink cartridge is a genuine product. Then, when it is not a genuine product, the image forming apparatus prohibits the use. However, in the case of reusing the used cartridge collected, since the concave and convex portion formed on the cartridge are unchanged, the use of the cartridge cannot be prevented. Therefore, the illegal reuse of the cartridge cannot be prevented.
The present invention has been made with consideration given to the abovementioned problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus capable of preventing the use of an illegal or defective ink cartridge, and its ink cartridge.
Also, another object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus capable of preventing the use of ink cartridges other than a predetermined ink cartridge, and its ink cartridge.
Further another object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus capable of ensuring the formation of high quality image using a recycled ink cartridge.
In order to attain the above object, according to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an image forming apparatus for forming a desired image, the image forming apparatus comprises: an attaching section for attaching an ink cartridge, which contains ink from a supply port and which has a display member for displaying a predetermined image adhered to the supply port; a sensor for obtaining image data of the display member adhered to the attached ink cartridge to output the obtained image data; a memory for storing image data of an image displayed on the display member adhered to a genuine ink cartridge; a print section for printing said desired image; and a controller for determining whether or not image data outputted from the sensor substantially matches image data stored in the memory to allow the print section to perform printing when both image data match each other.
Moreover, according to the second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an ink cartridge of an image forming apparatus, which is attachable and removable to/from the image forming apparatus and which contains ink from a supply port, the ink cartridge comprising a display member, which is adhered to the supply port, broken by a peeling force from the supply port, and which has a predetermined image.